A coastal environmental attorney who opposes the way Encinitas granted permits for a seawall said Wednesday night that he will ask the state Coastal Commission to weigh in on the matter.

Attorney Marco Gonzalez made his comments moments after the Encinitas City Council voted 4-1, with Councilwoman Teresa Barth opposed, to deny his appeal of a city Planning Commission decision.

The Planning Commission unanimously agreed in January to grant permits allowing an emergency seawall to remain permanently in place. The wall was built in 2009 in the 1000 block of Neptune Avenue after a coastal bluff collapsed.

Gonzalez said Tuesday that he didn't expect the city to order the wall's removal now, but that the city should require the Neptune Avenue property owner to pay mitigation fees because the wall will have an effect on beach sand.

"It's time for (Encinitas) to make the hard decisions, imposing the mitigation," Gonzalez said, mentioning that the city of Solana Beach is changing its seawall-permit approval process in response to recent state Coastal Commission directives.

Mark Dillon, a Carlsbad attorney who represents the Neptune Avenue property owner, said there was no evidence that his client's new wall had any effect on beach sand. He repeatedly said that the wall is simply a replacement for a wooden structure that was in place for decades before the hillside collapsed in 2008.

"If you don't have significant environmental impacts, you don't have the need to mitigate significant impacts," Dillon said.

Mayor Jerome Stocks said he could tell that from the recent photographs of the site, and other members of the council majority said the property owner had agreed to voluntarily contribute money to a beach-sand replenishment fund.

Before the vote, Barth said she had questions about the age of the old seawall and its accompanying staircase to the beach. She said the property owner's documentation that the old wall and the staircase predate the state coastal protection act weren't very convincing.

A 1973 photograph provided as evidence was "such a bad reproduction" that "I couldn't figure out what the heck it was," she said.

Gonzalez, who has been active in Solana Beach seawall issues for more than dozen years, has said recently that Encinitas is about to become the new battleground over seawall projects.

However, Encinitas city officials said Tuesday night that the two cities are very different when it comes to coastal bluff ownership. Many of Solana Beach's coastal bluffs are publicly owned, said senior city planner Roy Sapa'u.

"It's a different case with the city of Encinitas --- the majority of our bluffs are privately owned," he said.